News Review: Equity Release
New year holds new opportunities to plan by
Andrea Rozario, director general of SHIP
With the start of a new year comes the opportunity to plan for the coming months and to make resolutions. The last few weeks of 2011 saw no respite in gloomy financial news, with unemployment rising further and family finances squeezed as a result of inflation. There was some disappointing news for those wishing to enter the property market with the removal of
the concession on stamp-duty on properties below £250,000. While the Government claims to have figures illustrating that this measure has not had the desired effect in helping more young people onto the property ladder, it still seems that a significant number of young people will
find themselves
pushed out of the market. older generations have an advantage here in that they have been fortunate enough to accumulate property wealth – meaning that they have a significant asset to use to meet either daily costs or unexpected expenses.
News Review: Packaging FTB help won’t come from new lenders by
Ian Balfour, CEO, Solent
Mortgage Services
It only seems like yesterday that the mortgage indemnity guarantee was in common use in the mortgage industry. But there are plenty of advisers who would consider themselves as experienced operators and would not have come across MIG, except as an essential part of any self- respecting Eastern European air force. No disrespect to them is intended but there is a generation of advisers who
have grown up in a post MIG world. It has been particularly interesting to see government wheel out its own mortgage indemnity
do with income generation. I would hasten to add that
scheme.
Interesting because the government had seen that they needed to do something and more importantly, be seen to do something to help the housing market by offering a scheme to help first-time buyers to take the plunge into home ownership. Equally interesting given the fuss that surrounded the final incarnation of a scheme, which was scrapped as the penny dropped that it had little to do with customer protection and everything to
16 MorTGaGE INTroducEr JANUARY 2012
the government’s valiant attempt to offer a very real scheme to protect customers is light years away from the old school offering. While there is much to commend in this approach, it has to be said that in a time of near recession offering effectively a tax payer guarantee to support home owners might be politically tricky should there be an implosion in house prices and a large number of foreclosures.
New lenders The new lenders who are rumoured to be launching next year will likely ignore the
first-time buyer completely in favour of more margin friendly sectors such as near prime and buy-to-let but overall new lenders have to be good for the adviser sector and a likely shot in the arm for aggregators and mortgage hubs. For brokers, new lenders represent more choice for clients and greater need for specialist advice. For product and service hubs like SMS and the rest of the packager market there is the optimism that new lenders will be looking to build market share and will want to tap into proven distribution and filtering services.
at the other end of the
age spectrum there have been several significant announcements in the equity release industry. at a recent industry event I provided an update on SHIP’s extensive engagement programme with the rest of the industry. It is our intention to act as a voice for the whole of the equity release industry rather than purely providers and therefore bring together providers, solicitors, advisers, surveyors, consultants and any other stakeholders as members of an industry body. over the next couple of months we will outline the framework of this new
organisation and I look forward to providing news on this. over the past twenty years
SHIP has worked to combat the legacy left by unregulated providers. I am extremely proud of the work we have done to safeguard customers while making them aware of the benefit that equity release products can have on a retirement income. We will continue this work through SHIP’s new format and hope to make further progress in engaging with customers, the Government and other stakeholders to put equity release on the retirement agenda.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52